


Gag Reflex

by PenelopeAbigail



Series: Whumptober 2020 [29]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man (Video Game 2018), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Beware, Captivity, Crying, Dark, Gen, I Think I Need A Doctor, Implied Vivisection, Implied/Referenced Torture, Intubation, Unethical Experimentation, Whump, Whumptober 2020, day 29, hopelessness, hurt!Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeAbigail/pseuds/PenelopeAbigail
Summary: If Peter hadn't starved himself, they wouldn't have had to shove a tube down his throat.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955698
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Gag Reflex

**Author's Note:**

> Day 29.
> 
> Another Dark one, guys. Not for the Faint of heart.

He was the fearless one.

The brave-beyond-all-reason one.

The strong and sarcastic one.

He was the one who, when he was hurt, would ignore it and make some stupid joke about it, then ignore it some more until it healed up all right.

He was the one who wouldn’t go down without a fight, and the one who would do absolutely anything ( _within reason, of course, he wasn’t a psycho_ ) to make sure the people he loved were safe.

The guy who rescued people from kidnappings, the guy that chased and caught thieves, the guy that sent would-be rapists into comas.

Spider-Man was the infallible hero, the one that did nothing for glory and everything for others. He never took credit but always the blame, never involved himself in stupid fallacies or moral dilemmas. It was help-people first, always, and fight-the-bad-guy last. Never any other order.

It only took two weeks to teach him fear.

~

They were coming for him.

He could hear their footsteps, they were just on the other side of the door.

He whimpered, knew they were angry with him, knew that nothing good waited for him in the room at the end of the hallway. That was surely where they would take him.

The door opened, squealed on its hinges, and he scrambled to stand.

He was already against the wall, which helped a lot, and he tried, pushed himself weakly on shaking legs, arms trembling.

His eyes adjust so quickly to the sudden light that he no longer noticed it, but the footsteps, those loud echoing footsteps on the smooth steel flooring, they were starting to get to him.

He flinched, couldn’t help it, whimpered again.

They were mad, he could tell. He knew they would be. They didn’t even have to say anything, just grabbed his arms in a bruising grip and hauled him out, not stumbling for a minute as his legs attempted to right themselves.

His body was so weak from malnutrition that he didn’t even try to stand and keep up with them. His mind was clouded with fear, but even then, strength shone through.

The fear, that thick, hard-to-breathe-through fear, didn’t want him to fight, didn’t want him to make these guys any angrier than they already were, but his pride combated that sentiment. His pride screamed _No, you can’t do this to me!_

This malnutrition was his way of fighting back. They couldn’t drug him through the food— _he knew they weren’t drugging him through the food_ —if he didn’t eat the food. They couldn’t drug him through the water— _he knew they weren’t drugging him through the water; he knew they weren’t drugging him at all, and wasn’t that a right shame—_

He wanted to fight back. He wanted to get away from here and go home, but he was so weak— _he knew he’d done this to himself_ —he couldn’t even get his legs under him— _he’d only been here two weeks and that wasn’t long enough to lose his fight_ —he couldn’t fight back, even though he wanted to.

He couldn’t fight back because it’d only been two weeks yet the fear wasn’t letting him. He wanted to fight back, but instead, he blamed it away.

He never did that. He never blamed anything on anything other than himself.

What was he becoming? What was this place turning him into?

He was shaking, and he blamed it on the malnutrition and weakness of his muscles and body, but he was so scared.

At least he wasn’t begging.

The white door at the end of the hallway was getting closer, and he shuttered in their arms.

The white door at the end of the hallway was right in front of them, and he picked his legs up to stop their advance.

The white door at the end of the hallway opened, and he wrenched his arms out of their grasp in a desperate attempt to put an end to this madness and escape.

He fell back, caught himself with both arms, and found the strength in his core to run the opposite direction, run back the way they came and get out of there, but it was too late.

The men were prepared for a struggle as they always were and reacted accordingly, drawing their batons and beating him.

He hadn’t fully healed from yesterday’s session, crying out in pain as his delicate skin was bruised further and crushed, his struggling momentarily ceased.

His arms were snatched, his body wrenched from the floor and slammed onto that table, that dreadful table, that cold, ominous table, always covered in blood, however clean.

It would always be covered in blood.

His blood.

 _No_.

This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

_Not again._

He whimpered, flailing as much as he could, but his arms were grabbed by the nurses and held tight. He was still stronger and proved it, knocking them back, and the guard at the door growled, cursed in some foreign language, and slammed his stun baton into Pete’s stomach.

He seized, writhing from the current, his weak body giving in and breaking down. When the flow ceased, the despair sneaked in while the tears sneaked out, and he sobbed. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t be strong. Not again. Not this.

They strapped him in, those impossible ropes weaving through the medieval manacles, and then a nurse approached with a scalpel.

He knew what was going to happen, knew it would be a continuation of yesterday’s exploration, knew that he was going to be in a lot of pain again, but until that moment, until he _saw_ the scalpel approaching his forearm, he didn’t believe it.

Or maybe he did, but he hoped against it.

He strained against the self-inflicted malnutrition, strained against the pathetic chains, and against the weak human arms that held him, being rewarded with more electricity. He writhed once more, squeezing his eyes closed and allowing more tears to fall.

They used the electricity to keep him incapacitated until they could stop him from moving themselves, so when it stopped and he could breathe again, he whimpered on an inhale and on the exhale? He shouted, loud and long. It was not a scream born of pain and it was not a cry. He shouted his frustrations and he shouted his hopelessness and his noncompliance, voiced it with his vocal cords, and a nurse ran the scalpel expertly down his arm.

He flinched and his shout turned to pain, but he couldn’t focus on that because she pried the skin back and inserted the scalpel again, and he knew what was coming, knew she was going to take away his ability to move, so he balled his fist up tight, just one more time while he still could.

He couldn’t even focus on that because another nurse approached with a tube, and there were three nurses on that side so he couldn’t see what that tube belonged to, but he was sure it was a result of his malnutrition.

Why couldn’t they just use an IV?

He sobbed, despair and fear encompassing his every thought, and he lost his fist, lost that fight, prepared himself to lose another. Easier said than done because he was in pain and writhing still, crying still, and his flesh on the other arm was sliced open the exact same way, but he couldn’t focus on that, because they were prying his jaw open, uncomprehending his strength.

They just shocked him into compliance and dislocated his jaw so he couldn’t stop them. They must not want him chomping down on the tube that slid down his throat.

It was dry. It was rough. It made him gag, and he couldn’t stop. He felt like he couldn’t breathe (they put that damn nasal canola on his upper lip to provide oxygen), and couldn’t swallow, and his other fist fell open without his command.

His throat hurt from the intrusion. His arms hurt from the muscle surgery. His pride hurt because he couldn’t stop it.

He had all these powers, all this strength, and he was _useless_. He was helpless and pathetic and he couldn’t move— _he couldn’t move because they did the same thing to the muscles in his legs, and_ he couldn’t move—and then another nurse— _they probably weren’t even nurses, more likely just doctors—_ another nurse approached with another scalpel and he knew what coming, what was about to happen, and he screamed as much as he could, tried to beg them to not to, beg them _no, please, don’t, please_.

_Please._

She approached with a sanitary swap, swiped all over his chest, just like yesterday.

_He couldn’t breathe._

Sliced a clean straight line down to his belly button, just like yesterday.

_He couldn’t move._

Peeled his skin back, just like yesterday.

_He couldn’t stop this._

He sobbed with every last piece of life that was in him, sobbed to rid this world of his sorrow, sobbed because he could do nothing else.

His pain was given no outlet, nowhere to go. He could not voice it. He could not writhe. He could only cry.

He lost himself in his screams and pain.

~

It has been two weeks, and they have already taught him fear.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a stand-alone one-shot for Whumptober, but it's a snippet of my previous whumptober ficlet Reaching for the Sun that I'm planning to continue.


End file.
